Lydie Breeze, Part Two: Aipotu
by John Guare

Lydie Breeze, Part Two: Aipotu Book Cover — Lydie Breeze, Part Two: Aipotu Cover

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Synopsis

THE STORY: The second chapter in the Lydie Breeze trilogy, AIPOTU meets our COLD HARBOR adventurers seven years after the end of the Civil War.

In that time, Lydie, Joshua, Amos, and Dan have built a magnificent utopian commune christened “Aipotu.”

However, their ideals meet reality when Joshua’s philosophical magnum opus, on which he has labored for years, is rejected for publication.

With Lydie working as a nurse to keep the commune solvent, Amos away on personal business, Joshua disheartened, and Dan off working the railroads, the community they had sought to establish is more fragmented failure than utopia.

But when Dan returns with a mysterious sum of money, their prayers, it seems, are answered—until greed trumps goodwill, and Aipotu may indeed mean disaster.

Lydie Breeze, Part One: Cold Harbor Lydie Breeze, Part Three: Madaket Road

Press Reviews

"Guare’s achingly beautiful tale is an epic exploration of humanity’s great potential and its most base impulses. Can the ideals of universality, selflessness and love triumph? Or will selfish pride and covetousness ruin everything? There are no easy answers to be found here, but is a captivating and enlightening journey. …if AIPOTU teaches us anything, it’s that the search for profound truth and universal explanations is inherently misguided. It is the everyday actions, petty emotions, and random twists of fate that make and break us.” —Talkin' Broadway. “[Guare’s] flavorful dialogue gives the historical setting an appealingly contemporary, mordent snap… the writing and imagery are beautiful."
— Philadelphia Magazine